40 comments:

"Why is it that the 'dark night of fascism' is always falling on the United States—and always landing on Europe?"

I'd answer Mr. Wolfe in part by observing that Europeans don't have the 2nd Amendment. 'Cause I don't know that many of my relatives in Austria ca. 1938 would have gone willingly to the cattle cars if they'd had a way to defend themselves.

As I attempted to teach my high school History students, when you dehumanize anyone, you've taken the first step down to road to Buchenwald. It can happen anywhere, Bosnia, Ruwanda, Europe, South America. Anywhere.

While the 2nd. Amendment may be something of a deterrent to goose-stepping on this side of the pond, what's really lacking in europe ( and increasingly here) is a tradition of independance from, and suspicion of, government actions. In truth, guns may not let you win, or even survive. It may simply give you control over when and how you die. How many would make the choice today to die on their feet rather than live on their knees? The greatest thing America has given the world is the concept of individual freedom & liberty as an important concept of a nation. The recent election results may signal the fading of that ideal.....

Comparing the activities on COPS to Auschwitz, like there's some sort of straight-line path from Domestic Violence calls and DUI roadblocks to gas chambers, is as fundamentally unserious as anything I've ever seen on HuffPo.

Not surprised; I heard an intelligent radio broadcaster start a talk with: 'I definitely believe that the Holocaust occurred...' going on to a factual discussion of post-war issues, in which 'I believe' was never used again. The only conclusion that I could draw was that not only are there Holocaust deniers, but they have enough weight that their fiction is routinely addressed as a serious part of the discourse. A triumph of relativism...this was in the US, by the way.

""Why is it that the 'dark night of fascism' is always falling on the United States—and always landing on Europe?""

Partially because hitherto The US was at it's core a country founded/laid and run by the English and their descendents with a generous admixture of Germans, Scandinavians and other Europeans who were fleeing that sort of crap in Europe and who bought in, in large measure to the American Idea.

That's changed thanks to a generous immigration policy (And other (lefty) philosophical projects) that is not so slowly changing the US into something that the pre WWII immigration did not.

Rome had a similar issue, for different reasons. The republic died hard and was replaced by the empire as fascist & nasty as anything we have, that went on and on and on.

"Cause I don't know that many of my relatives in Austria ca. 1938 would have gone willingly to the cattle cars if they'd had a way to defend themselves."

Fuzzy, I'd sincerely hope that such were the case; however, history tends to point in a different direction.

There is a story - which I've never bothered to fact-check, mind you - that prior to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, the Turks demanded that all Armenians turn in their guns, which prompted a wave of gun-buying among the Armenians so they'd have something to turn in to the Turks when they came knocking.

Earlier I was about to write that we live in a world gone mad. Madness, however, is the default state of human affairs.

It's crap like this which makes me wonder what Jesus went through all the trouble for.

The tradition among European Jewry, pre-Hitler, was that the pogroms would always occur to distract the populace from internal troubles and the best tactic was to keep your head down and let it blow over. A couple beatings, some broken glass, and it was done. Resisting would only make it worse.

So when a nation arose that really, seriously meant it the Jews were conditioned to keep their mouths shut and go along until it ran its course. By the time they figured it out they were already in the camps.

A significant part of the economic crisis in Hellas has come about because in that nation of roughly nine million Hellenic citizens, they also have three million Muslim illegal immigrants sucking at the national tit. I am not convinced that Golden Dawn is necessarily a bad thing; I happen to know a few expat members.

"That's changed thanks to a generous immigration policy (And other (lefty) philosophical projects) that is not so slowly changing the US into something that the pre WWII immigration did not."

Tam answers:Socialism came to this country long before WWII, in the steerage compartments of ships from Scandinavia and Germany and plenty of other lilly white European countries. etc...

Absolutely true, I'm sorry I emphasized immigration rather than the other philosophical projects, but it seems to me that prior to WWI and esp. 1960's there was a much greater effort to, oh, assimilate the newcomers to the correct way of thinking and living.

Mostly by ignoring them and not humoring their follies. Now it seems we pander.

1) The Armenian story might be true--but I would suspect that the Armenians bought guns to turn over to the Turks, while keeping their other guns hidden. IOW, they tried to game the Ottomans.

2)For the disastrous results of a total weapons ban, read up on the history of the Highlands after Culloden, and on through the Clearances. Democide without need for state intervention.

3)That article isn't totally accurate about Hungarian participation in the Holocaust. The Nazis ended up occupying Hungary because the Hungarian Fascist government wasn't enthusiastic about killing Jews; it was only after the actual occupation that Hungarian Jews became victims in large numbers. The native Fascist government actually was better for the Jews while it lasted than some other countries, such as France.

you got that right. They could hit anybody within 11+k miles. They have enough nukes to hit every country in the world with at least two, no matter how small a pisspot they are. In reality, of the ones they would target, they have enough to bounce the rubble in every one together. It is thought that they have now bumped Britain down a notch on the short list of nuke powers, behind the US, Russia, and China.

This reason is why the rest of the world should be stomping all over Iran to put a stop to their idiocy. And Syria should be next.

Frankly, I expect that within my lifetime, the middle east will attain a certain brittle surface feature, with that lovely blue inner glow to it.

I wonder how long those oil fields will remain unworkable. For that matter, what effect would directly targeting a field have? Could that turn it into the mother of all torches? I'm thinking some of those are fairly shallow deposits.

Tam,Comparing the activities on COPS to Auschwitz, like there's some sort of straight-line path from Domestic Violence calls and DUI roadblocks to gas chambers, is as fundamentally unserious as anything I've ever seen on HuffPo.

And this is as fundamentally unserious as anything you've ever written.

We've stood by and let our freedom deteriorate to the point that cops kick down people's doors in the middle of the night -- and that DID happen in Nazi Germany.

"Why is it that the 'dark night of fascism' is always falling on the United States—and always landing on Europe?"Umm, insufficient velocity to achieve escape velocity or even orbit?

As for the discussion of the slippery slope: I think the discussion of what is what and where it is headed is both theoretical and cautionary. Theoretical in the sense that water poured on the ground in western Wyoming can flow either to the Pacific or the Atlantic based on ones location, give or take a mile, and cautionary in the sense that Germany Japan, and Russia didn't wake up one day and say, "let's be the scourge of the world for a few years." They got there via a slippery slope that started slow.

"The tradition among European Jewry, pre-Hitler, was that the pogroms would always occur to distract the populace from internal troubles and the best tactic was to keep your head down and let it blow over. A couple beatings, some broken glass, and it was done. Resisting would only make it worse.

So when a nation arose that really, seriously meant it the Jews were conditioned to keep their mouths shut and go along until it ran its course. By the time they figured it out they were already in the camps."

It's amazing to me how often this same story plays out over and over in history, from the lowest mugger vs victim to the highest government vs people. Different actors and different bad things, but always the same basic story. The lesson to be learned is that while resistance may make things worse in the short term, non-resistance always makes things MUCH worse in the long term.